2 Individualist self-realization

Romanticism was the prime influence in bequeathing conceptions of self-realization to the individualized notions of selfhood, prompting a view of the self as invested with a capacity to develop - freely and creatively - a naturally given potential to lead a morally worthy, aesthetically stimulating life (see Romanticism, German). This was distinguishable from the collectivist variant in that the self-realizing lifestyle was held to be unique to each individual and no longer required reference to the purposes of a larger whole for its full meaning. Many individualistic conceptions nevertheless stressed self-realization's dependence upon specific forms of community as necessary means for its achievement, retaining the concept's potential as critic of degenerate societies and inspiration for social and political reform. The emphasis had nevertheless switched to the individual's uniqueness as the end in itself and in some other versions, notably that of the later Rousseau, modern society is seen as so irredeemably corrupt as to require virtual abandonment by the self seeking realization (see Rousseau, J.-J.).

The 'individualistic' label should not obscure the fact that these conceptions generally reaffirm the idea that there are certain features common to everyone's self-realization: similar kinds of potential, for example. This preserves the viability of 'self-realization' as something identifiably separate from other ways of living. Yet the same sensitivity to human diversity which undermined the collectivists' credibility poses serious challenges here, too. One may doubt that even the relatively minimal shared features specified by these conceptions really exhaust all cases of what self-realization might legitimately involve. One may believe there is no warrant for characterizing self-realization as anything other than however individuals would like to live, in which case the need for - perhaps even the very intelligibility of - the concept as distinct from, say, mere 'autonomy' must be questioned (see Autonomy, ethical).

Alternatively, if self-realization is still defined in sufficiently substantive terms to avoid a content-draining equation of it with 'whatever one chooses to be or do', but one also desires to respect individuals' autonomy (as individualistic conceptions usually profess to do), self-realization very readily reduces simply to one lifestyle option among many which might be chosen by free people. Though this need not force a denial that it is the best form of life, preference for self-realization over respect for autonomy as a social and political ethic consequently seems to lose justification.

3 Further problems

Yet 'self-realization' can be revised to insist that the highest realizable values must spring from part of human nature, urging that we learn to identify with that part which promises the most fulfilling and sustainable form of

personal and social life, and fashion our lifestyles accordingly. Green moral and political thought has utilized the concept thus, interestingly de-emphasizing its usual 'activist' insistence upon personal striving in a reconciliation of the self with nature which is more reminiscent of the spiritual, contemplative self-realizationist ethics in Eastern

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”

 “One should always make constant efforts to seek such a Guru, who can lead him to the path of self-realization.”

According to Maslow, self realized people share the following qualities:

• Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness

• Goodness: rightness, desirability, uprightness, benevolence, honesty

• Beauty: rightness, form, aliveness, simplicity, richness, wholeness, perfection, completion,

• Wholeness: unity, integration, tendency to oneness, interconnectedness, simplicity, organization, structure, order, not dissociated, synergy

• Dichotomy-transcendence: acceptance, resolution, integration, polarities, opposites, contradictions

• Aliveness: process, not-deadness, spontaneity, self-regulation, full-functioning

• Unique: idiosyncrasy, individuality, non comparability, novelty

• Perfection: nothing superfluous, nothing lacking, everything in its right place, just-rightness, suitability, justice

• Necessity: inevitability: it must be just that way, not changed in any slightest way

• Completion: ending, justice, fulfillment

• Justice: fairness, suitability, disinterestedness, non partiality,

• Order: lawfulness, rightness, perfectly arranged

• Simplicity: nakedness, abstract, essential skeletal, bluntness

• Richness: differentiation, complexity, intricacy, totality

• Effortlessness: ease; lack of strain, striving, or difficulty

• Playfulness: fun, joy, amusement

• Self-sufficiency: autonomy, independence, self-determining